This ‘NCIS’ Episode Broke the Franchise’s Most Frustrating 6-Year Trend
Amanda M. Castro is a Network TV writer at Collider and a New York–based journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, where she is an Associate Editor, and The U.S. Sun, where she previously served as a Senior Consumer Reporter.
She specializes in network television coverage, delivering sharp, thoughtful analysis of long-running procedural hits and ambitious new dramas across broadcast TV. At Collider, Amanda explores character arcs, storytelling trends, and the cultural impact of network series that keep audiences tuning in week after week.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Amanda is bilingual and holds a degree in Communication, Film, and Media Studies from the University of New Haven.
For six years, NCIS took a rather infuriating approach to one of its key characters, Ziva David (Cote de Pablo). After she left the show, they kept bringing up her name, mentioning her, talking about her relationships, and slowly making clear what happened to her. But viewers never got what they really wanted — Ziva herself.
That finally changed with the Season 16 finale, “Daughters.” The episode’s final moments revealed that Ziva was alive, ending one of NCIS’ longest-running mysteries and giving the franchise a chance to finally bring the former Mossad and NCIS agent back into the story. After six years of Ziva existing largely in the past tense, NCIS finally let her step back into the present.
Ziva David Spent Six Years as an ‘NCIS’ Ghost
de Pablo’s departure was a major turning point for NCIS. Ziva had been part of the series since Season 3, becoming one of its defining characters and developing an especially complicated relationship with Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly). Her final appearance as a series regular came in Season 11, Episode 2, “Past, Present, and Future,” which aired on October 1, 2013.
The episode made Ziva’s departure feel definitive. Tony even traveled to Israel hoping to find her, while Ziva chose to remain there rather than return to NCIS. For the next several seasons, however, the show couldn’t quite leave her alone. Ziva was repeatedly mentioned or alluded to without actually appearing. Her relationship with Tony remained an important piece of NCIS mythology, particularly after Tony discovered that they had a daughter, Tali. Then, in Season 13, the series seemingly closed the book for good when the team learned that Ziva had apparently been killed in an attack on her farmhouse.
By Season 16, Ziva’s supposed death had become less of an ending and more of a question mark. Eleanor Bishop (Emily Wickersham) discovered evidence suggesting Ziva might still be alive, and “Daughters” finally confirmed it. In the episode’s closing moments, Ziva appeared in Gibbs’ (Mark Harmon) basement and delivered the kind of cliffhanger NCIS had been carefully avoiding for years: she was alive, and she was coming back.
‘NCIS’ Finally Put Ziva Back in the Picture
“Daughters” was significant because it ended the show’s six-year dance around Ziva’s fate. Ziva had faked her death after the attack on her farmhouse, going undercover to track down the people responsible while protecting Tali. Tony, meanwhile, had left NCIS and was raising their daughter. Ziva’s return, therefore, gave the show a chance to repair an ending that had left both Ziva's and Tony’s stories hanging in a particularly awkward place.
De Pablo had previously said she wanted Ziva’s story to have more substance before agreeing to bring her back. Her 2019 comeback ultimately gave the character something the original departure never really managed: agency over her own ending.
Ziva had spent years being defined by what happened to her. She left NCIS, was presumed dead, her daughter was sent to Tony, and her former colleagues mourned her. Even her romantic relationship with Tony existed mostly through memories and implications. Bringing Ziva back let her make choices again.
Ziva’s ‘NCIS’ Return Came With One Last Twist
Ziva’s return didn’t mean viewers would immediately get the reunion they had been waiting for. She appeared in four episodes of Season 17 — “Out of the Darkness,” “Into the Light,” “The North Pole,” and “In the Wind” — as she worked with Gibbs and the team to eliminate the threat against her family. Once Sahar was defeated, Ziva should have been free to go to Paris and reunite with Tony and Tali. Instead, “In the Wind” threw one final obstacle in her path when Gibbs’ young neighbor, Phineas (Jack Fisher), disappeared.
Ziva stayed to help find him, partly because she understood what it meant for a child to lose a parent. A more personal fear lay beneath her hesitation: after everything she had endured, Ziva wasn’t sure Tali would remember her or that she could simply step back into her old life as though nothing had happened.
Tony’s video message from Tali finally gave her the reassurance she needed. Ziva left for Paris after Phineas was found, with Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) escorting her to the airport. Her final physical appearance on the flagship series came in “In the Wind,” which aired January 7, 2020. After that, Ziva appeared only through archive footage, photographs, or references on NCIS until her story eventually continued in Tony & Ziva.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.